Total quality management a modern key to managerial effectiveness

This paper presents a literature review to identify and determine the more suitable managerial approach to effective management. The research applied systematic review of literature on two managerial approaches (total quality management and strategic planning). Results of the analysis of literature review indicated that both total quality management (TQM) and strategic planning (SP) individually give mixed results (positive and negative) when linked to performance/competiveness. Therefore, the study recommends the integration of SP with TQM to achieve the optimal organizational performance. The results also indicated that both SP and TQM are good approaches for effective management though TQM is more suitable to managerial effectiveness in the twenty first century. Organisations with limited financial resources that can only afford one of the two approaches are strongly recommended to adopt TQM. The study identified lack of empirical tests on how SP mediates the relationship between TQM and performance/competitiveness as a major gap in literature. This study contributes to literature by being the firs t paper to comprehensively analyse and determine the most suitable approach to managerial effectiveness in twenty first century.